Fretting wear behavior of superelastic nickel titanium shape memory alloy

The fretting behavior of superelastic nickel titanium (NiTi) shape memory alloy was studied at various displacement amplitudes on a serve-hydraulic dynamic test machine. The results showed that the superelastic properties of the material played a key role in the observed excellent fretting behavior of NiTi alloy. Due to the low phase transition stress (only 1/4 the value of its plastic yield stress) and the large recoverable phase transition strain (5%) of NiTi, the friction force of NiTi/GCr15 stainless steel pair is smaller than the value of GCr15/GCr15 pair and at the same time the Rabinowicz wear coefficient of NiTi plate is about 1/9 the value of GCr15 plate under the same fretting conditions. For NiTi/GCr15 pair, even NiTi has a much lower hardness than GCr15, the superelastic NiTi alloy exhibits superior fretting wear property than GCr15 steel. It was found that the weak ploughing was the main wear mechanism of NiTi alloy in the partial slip regime. While in the mixed regime and gross slip regime, the wear of NiTi was mainly caused by the abrasive wear of the GCr15 debris in the three-body wear mode.